On Feb. 5, over 100 Muncie community members attended Indiana Department of Transportation’s (INDOT) public hearing regarding improving four of State Road 32’s intersections.

The intersections in the “Improve 32” project area are Main Street and Madison Street, Jackson and Madison Street, Main and Hackley Street and Jackson and Hackley Street.

Due to large amounts of car crashes — and severe crashes — along with hopes to improve traffic flow in the intersections, INDOT, with their consultant Lochmueller Group, presented multiple solutions to the public.

Data collected by INDOT from 2018-2020 showed 157 crashes occurred at the four intersections, 20 of them being fatal or incapacitating injuries. 

The “Improve 32” project area is unique due to there being two historic districts, an arts district and several section 4(f) properties, according to Nicole Minton, Lochmueller’s public outreach manager.

Section 4(f) is a law prohibiting INDOT “from using any publicly owned public parks, recreation areas, and wildlife or waterfowl refuges, or any publicly or privately owned historic site listed or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places for public transportation purposes without first determining either that associated impacts are de minimis or that there is no prudent and feasible alternative to the use of such resources,” according to INDOT’s Cultural Resource Manual.

Blake Dollier, INDOT public relations director of the Crawfordsville District, filled in for the Greenfield District.

“We are aware the project affects or is near the historical properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There are two archeological sites that have also been identified within this project area,” Dollier said. “Ongoing consultation with those parties, the historians, archeologists [and] local stakeholders [will] help guide the design efforts to minimize the impacts on these as well.”

Keeping this uniqueness in mind, INDOT and Lochmueller developed five potential solutions: two-way stop controls, four-way stop controls, traffic signals, urban roundabouts or full-size roundabouts. 

Though the stop controls solved the safety need of the project, it made efficiency worse. 

Stoplights, the current configuration at Madison Street intersections, wouldn’t address safety concerns on Madison, but on Hackley it would. However, the volume at the intersection doesn’t meet signal warrants and could create delays on Main and Jackson, Minton said.

When it comes to the roundabouts, both solve the safety and efficiency needs of the project, but the full-size impacts section 4(f) properties due to its size. The urban roundabout has a more compact design.

“Where they differ is on the amount of impacts that urban roundabouts have, lower right of way impacts and no impacts to structures,” Minton said.

There are other solutions being analyzed, such as shifting the urban roundabouts design to have less 4(f) impacts and making Madison and Walnut Street one-way pair streets to have less traffic on Madison — however, safety wouldn’t improve and new data would have to be collected with the new traffic patterns. 

With urban roundabouts being the leading solution — but not the decided one — INDOT analysis showed roundabouts provide up to a 90% reduction in fatalities and a 76% reduction in injury crashes, along with a 30 to 50% increase in traffic capacity.

Another benefit Minton said is that due to not having stoplight equipment, there’s an average savings of $5,000 per year in electricity and maintenance costs.

With an estimated schedule of having the decided solution in early 2026 and starting construction in mid 2027, INDOT will have more public meetings regarding the project.

At the end of the presentation, community members were encouraged to ask questions and voice their thoughts.

Marina Quirk, who lived in Muncie her whole life, voiced her concern since her father owns a muffler shop on Main and Madison. 

That intersection has many buildings such as Cornerstone, Madjax Maker Force, a historical brick building and her father’s mufflers shop. She has one general question: “The realistic way that they can handle that capacity,” Quirk said. 

She believes the roundabout may work but in the end, it comes down to the people.

“People need to put their phones down and start paying attention. Whether or not they're driving or walking around in this world, people need to put their phones down and pay attention and look,” Quirk said.  

Another resident, Jodi Moisan, is a Muncie local and shared that she got involved with road safety after she saw a handful of accidents take place at the intersection of Madison and Washington. She shared many stories about how she saw accidents and some of the cars even being in her yard.

“There's someone in my yard that ran a red light and hit somebody. And literally, I'm mowing the grass out there. I'm picking up trash out there,” she said.

Moisan shared she went to the city council to present the issues and since then the city fixed the stop lights and made the red lights have a longer time.

She wants people to know that running red lights is not a “victimless crime” since people can get hurt and even die. Mosian wants to put a billboard up that shows what could happen if someone runs a red light to bring awareness to it. 

Ethan Bailey, who works at Madison and Main A-1 Mufflers thinks this will hurt businesses more than help them.  He believes it’s going to take more than one year to have it completely done.

“I'm confident it would take over a year to do that good, kill over a year [of] business. You can't pay bills off,” Bailey said.

Both Minton and Dollier encourage the public to reach and make their voices heard on this project.

“Please make your voice heard. Submit your comments. We are encouraging everybody to do that. This is something we want to hear from the public. Your comments are valued,” Dollier said.

To provide feedback or voice concerns, reach out to Minton via email at Nicole.Minton@lochgroup.com or call 812-759-4179. 

Contact Hannah Amos via email at hannah.amos@bsu.edu or on X @Hannah_Amos_394 

Contact Shelby Anderson via email at sanderson9@bsu.edu

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